The onset of the year 2018 has not been favourable for Bitcoin, as it started to loose its lustre in the last few weeks of 2017.

Otherwise, the virtual currency created a craze among people across the globe so much so that it touched a high of $19,694-level in the first three weeks of December 2017, touching a market valuation of over $234 billion.

It had swayed the mood of investors who boosted this digital coin by nearly 140,571.43% or 1406.71 times in the last five years. But times have changed and the cryptocurrency tumbled by 38.31% or $7,545.76 in the last three weeks.

Performance of Bitcoin has been so volatile that it is very difficult for analysts to catch real sense of its valuation.

Andrew Kenningham, Chief Global Economist at Capital Economic, says, "As with many start-ups, the “true” value of Bitcoin is unknown because it is unclear whether it has a longterm future."

Bitcoin remained the only cryptocurrency till 2011 holding 100% market capitalisation, but after 2011, over 1300 virtual currencies came into existence with a total market cap of over $300 billion.

While Bitcoin continues to trend in red, there are other cryptocurrencies which are gaining momentum in 2018.

Except Bitcoin, according to Coinmarket data, there are 12 digital currencies which are seeing uptick in their performance mostly because they are not highly valued as compared to Bitcoin.

Two cryptocurrencies namely Dash and NEM have gained nearly 7,500 times since their inception. This is quite interesting, as Bitcoin took eight years to see such high valuation, while these two managed to outrun Bitcoin in the last five years.

Dash

Dash came into existence during January 2014 with the name of Darkcoin, but was later rebranded as Dash in March 2015.

“Dash developed new methods for reducing the traceability of transactions by mixing many transactions together before sending them to the final destination. The process of mixing blurs the identity of the original sender,” said Incrementum.

To increase its privacy further, Dash does not have a publicly available ledger. Recently, the developers made successful efforts to increase merchant acceptance of Dash.

Performance of Dash has been commendable, as it has increased 743,723.02% or 7438.23 times so far. Dash which started below $1 is now stands at $1591-level.

NEM

The New Economy Movement (NEM) launched in March 2015, brings new features to the blockchain system.

This cryptocurrency started out as little more than a proof-of-concept, but it has been picked up by the commercial blockchain Mijin, causing the value of XEM, the platform’s currency to soar.

NEM, which started off below $0.000285, has shooted up to $2.09, gaining by 733,233.33% or 7333.33 times.

Here's a list of other cryptocurrencies that have been performing well so far.

Launched in 2015, Ethereum provides a platform where decentralized applications can be built and operated by anyone. Also, Ethereum smart contracts operate without downtime or censorship.

As per Incrementum, Etheruem's market capitalisation is approximately $44 billion with approximately 94 million ethers and a price of $460 per token.

Ethereum now stands at the third place with a market cap of $72 billion, and has gained by 91,519.55% or 916.20 times.

Ripple

Introduced in 2012, Ripple was co-founded by Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb. The coin is labelled as a XRP.

This digital currency acts as a bridge to other currencies. One key point of Ripple is that it does not discriminate between one fiat/crypto currency and another, therefore, makes it easy for any currency to be exchanged for another.

Ripple has managed to become the second highest valuable cryptocurrency, having market cap of over $100 billion. Ripple grew by a massive 64,673.89% or 647.74 times across nations.

Stellar

Born in 2014, Stellar comes as an open source blockchain that allows cross-border transactions with equal access for all participants.

According to Inverse.com, data Stellar promises transaction times of two to five seconds with fees of just a fraction of a cent.

Stellar has grown by a whopping 30,968.58% or 310.69 times since its inception.

Monero

Monero was introduced to the world in April 2014, and as per Investopedia, this coin soon spiked great interest among cryptography community.

Monero has been launched with a strong focus on decentralisation and scalability, as it enables complete privacy by using a special technique called “ring signatures”.

This cryptocurrency traded below $2 in 2014, climbed to over $450 recently, surging by 25667.98% or 257.68 times.

NEO

NEO is a blockchain project launched in China. This digital coin is a platform that enables the development of digital assets and smart contracts.

Launched as Antshares in 2014, it was soon changed to NEO in June 2017, supporting 10,000 transactions per second. Since its introduction, NEO which stood below $1 in 2014 soared to $118-level - growing by 21356.56% or 214.56 times.

Barring these cryptocurencies, there are other virtual currencies including Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, TRON, IOTA and Cardano

Litecoin came into existence in 2011, and is often referred to as “silver”. This has jumped by 8184.65% or 82.84 times so far.

A month ago anyone hardly knew about TRON in the cryptocurrency market, but it started to steal limelight this week as it has surged 15031.11% or 151.31 times.

Just like Ripple, market valuation of TRON rose by six-folds from $2.8 billion on January 1 to $18.7 billion on January 5, 2018.

IOTA, which was founded in 2015, focused on providing secure communication and payment between machines on the Internet of Things. It has increased by 720.67% so far, and reached over $5 from $0.6385 in 2014.

Cardano is a project that began in 2015 as an effort to change the way cryptocurrencies work. This has surged 4800.22% clocking over $1.24-mark.

Bitcoin was split on August 1, 2017, and a chain coming out of it was set up, and was termed as Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Bitcoin Cash has witnessed a jump of 629.31% clocking over $4,000-mark from $550-level in August 2017.

The furture scenario

Paul Vigna, an expert, in Incrementum report said, "At their core, cryptocurrencies are built around the principle of a universal, inviolable ledger, one that is made fully public and is constantly being verified by these high-powered computers, each essentially acting independently of the others.”

Andrew Kenningham, however, said, "We will have more to say about the economics of cryptocurrencies in the coming months for now the key point is that it is a curiosity, but not a major economic risk.”

"But we doubt that any cryptocurrency will become a serious rival to the dollar or other major fiat currencies, many of which have centuries of history behind them and the backing of governments and central banks," Kenningham added.

zeenews.india.com understands that your privacy is important to you and we are committed for being transparent about the technologies we use. This cookie policy explains how and why cookies and other similar technologies may be stored on and accessed from your device when you use or visit zeenews.india.com websites that posts a link to this Policy (collectively, “the sites”). This cookie policy should be read together with our Privacy Policy.

By continuing to browse or use our sites, you agree that we can store and access cookies and other tracking technologies as described in this policy.

What are Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies?

A cookie is a small text file that can be stored on and accessed from your device when you visit one of our sites, to the extent you agree. The other tracking technologies work similarly to cookies and place small data files on your devices or monitor your website activity to enable us to collect information about how you use our sites. This allows our sites to recognize your device from those of other users on our sites. The information provided below about cookies also applies to these other tracking technologies.

How do our sites use Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies?

Zeenews.com use cookies and other technologies to store information in your web browser or on your mobile phone, tablet, computer, or other devices (collectively "devices") that allow us to store and receive certain pieces of information whenever you use or interact with our zeenews.india.com applications and sites. Such cookies and other technologies helps us to identify you and your interests, to remember your preferences and to track use of zeenews.india.com We also use cookies and other tracking technologies to control access to certain content on our sites, protect the sites, and to process any requests that you make to us.
We also use cookies to administer our sites and for research purposes, zeenews.india.com also has contracted with third-party service providers to track and analyse statistical usage and volume information from our site users. These third-party service providers use persistent Cookies to help us improve user experience, manage our site content, and analyse how users navigate and utilize the sites.

First and Third-party Cookies

First party cookies

These are those cookies that belong to us and which we place on your device or are those set by a website that is being visited by the user at the time (e.g., cookies placed by zeenews.india.com)

Third-party cookies

Some features used on this website may involve a cookie being sent to your computer by a third party. For example, if you view or listen to any embedded audio or video content you may be sent cookies from the site where the embedded content is hosted. Likewise, if you share any content on this website through social networks (for example by clicking a Facebook “like” button or a “Tweet” button) you may be sent cookies from these websites. We do not control the setting of these cookies so please check the websites of these third parties for more information about their cookies and how to manage them.

We use the following types of cookies:

Persistent Cookies
We use persistent cookies to improve your experience of using the sites. This includes recording your acceptance of our cookie policy to remove the cookie message which first appears when you visit our site.Session Cookies
Session cookies are temporary and deleted from your machine when your web browser closes. We use session cookies to help us track internet usage as described above.
You may refuse to accept browser Cookies by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of the sites. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will check if cookies can be captured when you direct your browser to our sites.
The data collected by the sites and/or through Cookies that may be placed on your computer will not be kept for longer than is necessary to fulfil the purposes mentioned above. In any event, such information will be kept in our database until we get explicit consent from you to remove all the stored cookies.

We categorize cookies as follows:

Essential Cookies

These cookie are essential to our site in order to enable you to move around it and to use its features. Without these essential cookies we may not be able to provide certain services or features and our site will not perform as smoothly for you as we would like. These cookies, for example, let us recognize that you have created an account and have logged in/out to access site content. They also include Cookies that enable us to remember your previous actions within the same browsing session and secure our sites.

Analytical/Performance Cookies

These cookies are used by us or by our third-party service providers to analyse how the sites are used and how they are performing. For example, these cookies track what content are most frequently visited, your viewing history and from what locations our visitors come from. If you subscribe to a newsletter or otherwise register with the Sites, these cookies may be correlated to you.

Functionality Cookies

These cookies let us operate the sites in accordance with the choices you make. These cookies permit us to "remember you” in-between visits. For instance, we will recognize your user name and remember how you customized the sites and services, for example by adjusting text size, fonts, languages and other parts of web pages that are alterable, and provide you with the same customizations during future visits.

Advertising Cookies

These cookies collect information about your activities on our sites as well as other sites to provide you targeted advertising. We may also allow our third-party service providers to use cookies on the sites for the same purposes identified above, including collecting information about your online activities over time and across different websites. The third-party service providers that generate these cookies, such as, social media platforms, have their own privacy policies, and may use their cookies to target advertisement to you on other websites, based on your visit to our sites.

How do I refuse or withdraw my consent to the use of Cookies?

If you do not want cookies to be dropped on your device, you can adjust the setting of your Internet browser to reject the setting of all or some cookies and to alert you when a cookie is placed on your device. For further information about how to do so, please refer to your browser ‘help’ / ‘tool’ or ‘edit’ section for cookie settings w.r.t your browser that may be Google Chrome, Safari, Mozilla Firefox etc.
Please note that if your browser setting is already setup to block all cookies (including strictly necessary Cookies) you may not be able to access or use all or parts or functionalities of our sites.
If you want to remove previously-stored cookies, you can manually delete the cookies at any time from your browser settings. However, this will not prevent the sites from placing further cookies on your device unless and until you adjust your Internet browser setting as described above.
For more information on the development of user-profiles and the use of targeting/advertising Cookies, please see www.youronlinechoices.eu if you are located in Europe or www.aboutads.info/choices if in the United States.

Contact us

If you have any other questions about our Cookie Policy, please contact us at:
If you require any information or clarification regarding the use of your personal information or this privacy policy or grievances with respect to use of your personal information, please email us at response@zeemedia.esselgroup.com.